Riot Games Will Pay You $25,000 to Quit

Admitting mistakes is never easy. Nor is quitting. But Riot Games wants to make it easier for new employees to leave if they decide their new job just wasn’t meant to be.

Last week, the company announced Queue Dodge, a program that allows any North American employee to leave the company within their first 60 days, taking with them 10 percent of their salary up to $25,000. The idea behind the approach is two-fold: Riot sees it as a way to reinforce its culture and to backstop its hiring process. “We’ve designed Queue Dodge to help self-identified mismatches move on in an open, positive, and constructive way,” the company said in the blog post announcing the program. It calls Queue Dodge “a well-lit, safe exit path.”

What they all have in common is the reasoning behind their approach: They want their employees to like their jobs for reasons that go beyond a simple paycheck; they want them to be invested in their culture and their mission. When he announced Zappos’ program, CEO Tony Hsieh said it all boiled down to brand: “At the end of the day, just remember that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — including building a great brand — will fall into place on its own.”

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Mark Feffer started as a videotape editor back when there was videotape to edit, then joined the news desk at Dow Jones News/Retrieval, the company's first online product. He produced The Wall Street Journal's first multimedia CD-ROMs and published his novel, "September," in 2006. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, their fierce terrier, and a schnauzer who wonders why she ever left California. He's a member of the Project Management Institute.